Research Fellow EEE

Location: Highfield Campus

Salary:  £28,982 to £35,609

Full Time Fixed Term

Closing Date:  Tuesday 18 October 2016

Reference: 780916FP

POETS - Partial Ordered Event Triggered Systems - is a new form of computing technique, made possible today by the proliferation of conventional cores at negligible cost, and the massive capabilities of programmable hardware (FPGAs). It is significantly different from conventional computing systems, and requires the design/construction of both hardware and infrastructure software from the ground up.

For certain classes of (traditionally extremely compute intensive) problem, POETS can - we contend - offer massive (orders of magnitude) speedups at a fraction of the cost of a conventional supercomputer. This translates directly into reducing the high-performance compute requirements of many engineering and research disciplines, with the attendant cost reduction.

The overarching goal of this project is to research and develop the core technology - hardware, firmware and software - that will enable the techniques of event-based programming and the underpinning hardware to be as ubiquitous as conventional computing architectures and methodologies are today. The goal is to deliver a portfolio of exemplars, attacking real, engineering/physics problems, and clearly demonstrating the superiority of the POETS approach to conventional solutions.

The project is four academic partners, Southampton (lead), Cambridge, Imperial College and Newcastle.

This post is focussed on taking the definition of the problem (generated by Imperial/Newcastle) and mapping it onto the array of compute nodes provided by the POETS platform (generated by Cambridge). The subproblems here include mapping, placement & routing, configuration table processing and internal communication protocols. On top of this, user-accessible configuration data has to be generated and presented in a manner sympathetic to the needs of each user. An important aspect is the scalability of the infrastructure: in principle, POETS systems should scale almost without limit - the reality needs to be explored. 

Both Electronics and Computer Science and the University of Southampton hold an Athena Swan Bronze Award, demonstrating their commitment to provide equal opportunities and to advance the representation of women in STEM/M subjects: science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine.  Due consideration will be given to applicants who have taken a career break.

The University has a generous maternity policy and onsite childcare facilities; employees are able to participate in the childcare vouchers scheme. Other benefits include state-of-the-art on-campus sports, arts and culture facilities, a full programme of events and a range of staff discounts.

Application Procedure:

You should submit your completed online application form at www.jobs.soton.ac.uk. The vacancy will close at midnight on the closing date as shown above.

References are requested along with your application. This reference system is automated so please ensure you provide the correct email address and allow time for these to be received, prior to the close date, to assist the department with shortlisting.

If you need any assistance, please call Suzanne Stone (Recruitment Team) on +44 (0) 23 8059 4043. Please quote reference 780916FP on all correspondence.